


Threat/Opportunity

by youjik33



Series: Stepped Out of the Line [3]
Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Car Sex, M/M, Post-Season 2, one-sided Jared/Richard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 09:05:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4473413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youjik33/pseuds/youjik33
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jared and Erlich have dinner and see a movie and it's definitely not a date.</p><p>Anyway, somehow all they ever talk about is Richard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Threat/Opportunity

**Author's Note:**

> I apparently wrote a sequel to [Just Another Hand](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4343252). And now it's also a sequel to [It's Better Face-to-Face](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4086031). You should probably read those first! Also, I am not very good at differentiating between an M and an E. If this is too much sex for an M, I apologize.
> 
> ...I'm starting to actually legitimately ship this pairing. Oops?

 “The problem is that I live in a house full of philistines,” Erlich said as he turned the key in the ignition. “Did you hear Gilfoyle call me a fucking weaboo? Can you believe that?”

“To be honest, I don't actually know what that word means,” Jared said, adjusting his seat belt.

“It means Gilfoyle has no idea what the fuck he's talking about, because Akira Kurosawa was a genius, and recognizing that does not make one a _weaboo_.”

“Well, I thought it was a compelling film. And the influences on _Star Wars_ are obvious. Gilfoyle probably would have found it interesting if he'd given it a chance.” He paused, watching the lights of the other cars go by as they left the Stanford campus behind them. “I wish Richard had come.”

Encouraging Richard to get out of the house and do something had been met with polite refusal at first, and then genuine irritation, and then a slammed bedroom door. Even now, hours later, Jared was regretting that he'd tried to push it so hard.

He looked down at his hands, clenched tightly in his lap. He hated feeling so helpless. Tensions had been high in the house all week, but Dinesh and Gilfoyle, at least, took theirs out on each other. Richard was just cutting himself off. At least Jared could help Erlich, in some small way, even if it was just seeing a movie with him.

He felt his cheeks warm, remembering the way he'd helped Erlich out three nights before. Why had he even loaded grindr in the first place? It had been a whim, really; he hadn't turned it on since he'd met Richard, but with everything suddenly falling apart he'd felt a little stab of desperate loneliness. He doubted he'd have even responded to any messages if he hadn't recognized Erlich.

Speaking of which. They'd stopped at a red light, and Jared was very aware of Erlich staring at him. “...what?” he asked.

“You mind taking a little detour?” Erlich asked.

“I guess not. What kind of-”

Erlich abruptly pulled into the left turn lane, zooming through the intersection, and Jared felt a little bubble of panic, a leftover reminder of the last time he'd been taken off course in a car he wasn't controlling. But Erlich was human, and both more rational and more intelligent than he sometimes seemed, and Jared managed to get his breathing back under control in minutes.

“Um,” he finally asked as they pulled onto the highway. “Where are we going?”

“Shut up and trust me,” Erlich said.

The funny thing was, Jared actually did, even when they got off the highway and Erlich pulled the van onto a steep, winding dirt road.

“Good, nobody else here,” Erlich said as they pulled into a parking lot. “You ever been up here?”

“I've been to other overlooks,” Jared said. “But not at night. It's beautiful.”

From their parking spot they could see the whole of Silicon Valley, lights glittering like jewels, San Francisco Bay glimmering in the distance. Erlich turned the van off and they just sat looking at it for a minute.

“I used to come up here a lot when I was stressed out,” Erlich said. “Just kinda helped calm me down, seeing how small everything looked.”

Jared tried to imagine that, Erlich anxious and lonely during his early days of developing... whatever Aviato actually was. The incubator, Raviga, even Sand Hill Road – none of it was recognizable from this distance. Jared thought he could pick out the glowing gray rectangle that was the Hooli building, but he wasn't sure. Maybe if he'd had this binoculars.

Erlich unbuckled his seat belt and tilted the seat back a few degrees. “Yeah,” he sighed. “I smoked a hell of a lot of weed up here.” He chuckled. “Brought a lot of dates up here too, now that I think about it. ...actually, that's not a bad idea.” He leaned over, reaching toward Jared's lap; Jared froze for a second, wide-eyed, but Erlich was just going for the glove box. He pulled out a paper lunch bag, and turned on the overhead light to examine its contents. “They might be a little old, but there are three in here, if you want one,” he said, pulling out a neatly rolled joint.

“Uh, no thank you,” Jared said. He had tried smoking marijuana exactly one time in college, and it had made him so jittery he'd felt sick. “You smoke in the car?”

“Not while I'm _driving,_ God. Unbunch your panties. I'm trying to get you to relax, here.”

“Oh. Yes. I appreciate it.” Something else had fallen out of the glove box, and Jared reached down to pick it up. It was a small cardboard box, lost in the shadows under the console, and when he pulled it out he found himself staring at the word DUREX printed on the side. The flap on top was sticking up, and he pulled it open; the box was half full, and there was even a tube of lube tucked inside.

Jared had no idea how long he'd looked at it, his mind completely blank, before Erlich snapped him out of it, saying “I'm up for it if you are.”

“Um,” was all Jared managed. _But you're high,_ he thought, except Erlich was still holding the joint, unlit, in one hand. _But I'm in love with someone else_ was the followup, and that one made his stomach lurch and the memory of a slammed door echo in his head.

Erlich was just watching him, eyebrows raised, curious but undemanding. Jared thought about the way Erlich's erection had felt in his hand, warm and heavy, about the scrape of his beard against the side of Jared's neck, about the noises he'd made when he came – and he was getting hard, he realized, just thinking about it.

“Okay,” he said. “Sure. ...there isn't much room in here, though, is there?”

“We'll make it work.”

Jared ended up hanging half off the back seat, jammed up against the window, with his pants and underwear hanging off his left leg and his shirt bunched up under his arms. Erlich was surprisingly gentle with the lube – he kept asking “This okay? How's that feel?”, until Jared finally got impatient and gasped “Just fuck me.”

It was hard to say which of them was more shocked by the profanity. They stared at each other for a second, and then Jared laughed a little, and Erlich said “Yeah, okay,” and pushed his way in.

It didn't exactly feel good, at first. The angle was off, and a seat belt was digging into Jared's back. He grabbed onto the back of the seat with one hand, dug the other into Erlich's hair, and moved his hips to meat Erlich's thrusts, and then something clicked, and suddenly they were moving in sync. Jared heard his own moans, and some detached corner of his brain thought _Wait, is this really happening?_

“You're so fucking tight,” Erlich growled. It wasn't even very dirty, in the grand scheme of dirty talk, but it made Jared lift his hips and gasp “Yeah,” which didn't even make sense as a response, not that it mattered. He dug his fingers into Erlich's scalp, which elicited a hissing gasp that Jared interpreted as pleasure.

“Gonna come,” Erlich said, and then he surprised Jared by leaning down to kiss him. It was a sloppy, awkward kiss, due to the angle, wet and open-mouthed, but it gave him a chance to get his other arm around Erlich's shoulders and feel Erlich shudder as he came.

He started to pull back, but Jared gasped “Wait, I'm close-”

Erlich got his hand between their bellies, took a few long pulls on Jared's erection, slick with pre-come. “Yeah, come on, babe,” he murmured next to Jared's ear.

 _Did he just call me 'babe'?_ Jared wondered, but only for a second, because then Erlich was biting down on his shoulder, and he was bucking into his hand and letting himself go.

They cleaned up with a stack of fast food napkins from the glove box; servicable, if not exactly romantic. Jared was sprawled across the back seat trying to get his shirt tucked back in when erlich opened the door.

“Um,” Jared said, “Did you see the sign we passed on the way in? 'Warning: Mountain Lions'?”

“You relaly think a mountain lion is going to maul me in the twenty feet between the car and the trash can?” Erlich laughed. “I'm not driving home with a stack of come-drenched napkins on the floor.”

Erlich got back into the car three seconds later in one piece. They just sat for a few moments, looking at the view – or at least Jared was; then Erlichsaid “Shit, I think I marked you,” and leaned over to pull Jared's collar open, and Jared realized Erlich had been looking at him, instead.

“I bruise easily,” he murmured apologetically.

Erlich buttoned the top button of Jared's shirt, smoothed out the collar. “There.”

“What are we doing?” Jared blurted.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, we just went to dinner and a movie and then made love on a mountain--”

“Uh.” Erlich cleared his throat. “I don't know if I'd call that 'making love', more like a good old-fashioned pounding. Look, Jared, if you really need to put a label on this, just think of us as friends with benefits, okay? You don't have to get all weird about it. I know you're in love with Richard but having a casual fuck doesn't mean you're betraying him. ...don't look so surprised, you're constantly gaping at him with big ridiculous puppy eyes, it's not exactly subtle.”

“You don't think he knows, do you?” Jared asked, horrified.

“Richard has probably the lowest self esteem of anyone I've ever met. I doubt it would occur to him as a possibility.”

“I kissed him once, though,” Jared said meekly. “Or, honestly, he might have kissed me; it was the night of the Intersite fiasco and we'd both had a few tequila shots, which isn't any excuse...”

“Seriously? Jesus.” Erlich sighed. “And then, what, he probably acted like nothing had happened and didn't bring it up at all afterward.”

Jared shook his head. “He also swore under oath that he's heterosexual, so...”

“Well, that was a crock of shit. I doubt he was lying on purpose, but Richard slides up a few points on the Kinsey scale when he drinks. You should've seen how handsy he was getting at Peter Gregory's toga party. Look, I love Richard too, albeit in more of a brotherly, mentorly kind of way, but he's an awkward mess even when he hasn't just been fired from CEO of his own company. If you don't explicitly point out exactly how you feel about him he's never going to figure it out on his own. Make a PowerPoint or something, that seems like your kind of thing.”

“Thank you, Erlich. That's actually very encouraging,” Jared said.

Jared pulled out his phone as the van headed out of the parking lot. Three days ago he'd used his SWOT app to help him decide if getting physical with Erlich was a good idea, but he'd had one card he'd never placed. It was too late to make a difference now, of course; the bridge had already been crossed. But he pulled up the app anyway, and dragged the card that said _fall in love?_ to Opportunities.

 


End file.
